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Dave Macleod: What I've Learned
It's easy to miss the beauty in climbing—the places it takes you, and the rock itself—if you only try routes you can do straight away.
This article appeared in Rock and Ice issue 195 (July 2011).
It's easy to miss the the beauty in climbing—the places it takes you, and the rock itself—if you only try routes you can do straight away. Facing routes that take time, that are hard for you, allows you to experience the rock and moves in more detail. One of the greatest things about mountain landscapes is how they change over time. Anyone who has a house in sight of nature knows this.
I can't get enough of project climbing. People always tell me I'm very patient. For a long time I believed them. Later I understood that I'm actually just good at sustaining impatience for an obscenely long time.
Sometimes I'm glad that the weather is crap in Scotland. It relentlessly drums a let's-hang-back-till-tomorrow attitude out of you. If you can get past this while still in your teens, it's a major advantage. When it's raining, get your work done. You sure as hell don't want to have to sit out the good day when it comes. When the sun comes out, get after it. If you fall off, have another go because tomorrow it'll be dripping again. The result is a lot of work done, bills paid, and probably just as much sending as you'd have done if it were blue skies every day.
There's something magical about finishing a route when you know that was your only chance for the year and you grabbed it. It turns out that this attitude, forced on you by the Scottish climate, is pretty useful for self-employment.
Indian Face (E9, 5.13a X) still has a legendary reputation as one of the most dangerous trad routes in the world. My wife belayed me pregnant with our daughter, Freida. It helped as a reminder that I'm in the business of climbing dangerous routes safely. I looked down at Claire just before I committed to the crux—she was yawning. It's funny how something like this makes you snap out of your romantic bubble of danger and drama, and just get to the belay so we can go down for tea.
I remember when I was 16 and had been climbing a year, I heard some chat at the crag about how Scottish climbing was so poorly recognized. Even then I could see the absurdity in waiting for someone else to wax lyrical about your life and dear places. The Brits are terribly worried about appearing immodest. In the process they fail to share stories and inspiration that get the next generation fired up. I really feel that sharing your energy and enthusiasm helps everyone, including yourself.
I love sport science and how it plays out in both the real world of humans and the messed-up world of sport. Modern consumer culture has an uneasy relationship with doing well in sport. Coaching climbers, I've seen many folk collecting sends, but not really enjoying their climbing very much. It's as the Buddhists say—people get too busy doing to do any being.
Certain aspects of being a good climber are harder than ever. I was really lucky to discover new routing at the age of 20. It's only by looking back that I can see why it motivated me. When you wander up a highland glen looking for new crags or boulders, you don't know what you're going to find. Instead of having your head in the guidebook adding up the tick you want to do, you're forced to look at the rock, the lines, and you appreciate the enjoyment of climbing much more. I feel more connected with the rock before routes and grades come into the equation.
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Climate House: Passive House as an Opportunity
Designing a new building in a flood zone can be a rigorous challenge but also an opportunity. In New York, Superstorm Sandy left behind devastated communities in low-lying coastal areas of Long Island. Some residents relocated for as long as one year and others opted not to return. Wanting to confront this challenge, I purchased a small lot in Freeport, Long Island, through a storm recovery program initiated by the Office of the Governor of New York State called New York Rising. The property included a storm-destroyed home that had to be demolished prior to reconstruction. The new building would have to be a climate-resilient home. I also envisioned the reconstruction as a chance to reduce its carbon footprint and adhere to strict energy efficiency standards. The Passive House (PH) concept was a natural fit, because these challenges are interrelated, and PH takes a whole-house approach. Central to the PH strategy is optimizing a building's mechanical systems to greatly reduce energy use compared to typical construction, and creating a healthy indoor environment. The home would also be able to withstand climate extremes, as it did in the polar vortex that occurred in January 2019. An all-electric PH with an emergency power system, such as a battery charged from PV, can operate independently of the grid in the event of an extended grid power outage, and continue to operate indefinitely if the occupants make minor behavioral changes.
Introduced to the market in May 2017, the 1,744 ft² three-bedroom, three-bath home sold in late June to a young family of four. As more PH properties appear on the market, both buyers and sellers will appreciate the features of a climate-resilient Passive House and will experience the energy and indoor air quality benefits of such a home.
Designed for Climate Resiliency
Many of the homes in the nearby neighborhoods featured oil tanks and boilers installed in the basement. Building codes written post-Sandy require that all construction in these flood zones be raised above a possible flood elevation where the ground level is free of any equipment. The average existing grade is 4.87 feet above sea level, but FEMA flood maps indicate that the flood zone is defined at 8 feet. The village of Freeport requires 4 feet of freeboard (room about flood level) on the underside of the first floor or the ceiling of a raised level. All mechanical and electrical outlets and switches are located above 12 feet of elevation. PH became an elegant solution to these requirements, as it sharply cuts heating-and-cooling demand and eliminates the need for an oil tank or boiler. The all-electric PH can be made comfortable in summer and winter because of its ducted 2-ton mini-split heat pump system. (The peak heating load is 8,414 Btu per hour and the peak cooling load is 9,033 Btu per hour, as calculated using PHPP_IP Version 9.5 software.) The small mechanical equipment is conveniently tucked away into the home`s central internal staircase ceiling, so that it does not obstruct the living space. (See Figures 1 and 2 for design details.)
An energy recovery ventilator with an energy recovery rate of 84% feeds 72 CFM of filtered fresh air continuously throughout the home. The design airflow rate, calculated according to PH specifications, is based on extracted and supply air requirements. Hot water is provided by an efficient 50-gallon heat pump water heater tucked away in the laundry room, which reduces noise to the other rooms. The floor plan was designed so that a centralized interior plumbing shaft services all three bathrooms, the kitchen, and the laundry. Instead of a traditional hot-water trunk-and- branch system, manifold plumbing was installed, with home run pipes directing water to each fixture. This further reduced energy waste and made it possible to deliver hot water more quickly, resulting in a calculated energy demand of 6,169 kBtu per year.
To determine the optimum ratio of the floor area to the envelope area of the building and improve energy performance, we used the software DesignPH.
To achieve PH-level performance for the Freeport house, we designed a double-wall assembly with a 2 x 6 platform-framed load-bearing interior wall. The applied structural sheathing served as a combined air barrier and vapor retarder and was joined with a special tape to allow the building to move without breaking the air seal. The plywood subfloor acts as the air barrier in the ceiling of the garage and is connected to the wall sheathing with a taped membrane. Similar detailing was used to connect the wall sheathing to the interior cathedral roof air barrier. The second step was to add an exterior 2 x 4 balloon-framed wall with 2 x 6 bottom and top plates, establishing a 2-inch gap between framing members and the inner wall sheathing and diminishing thermal bridging at the framing and rim joists. The interior walls were filled with dense-packed cellulose insulation, and electrical wires were installed without penetrating the airseal of the home. Fire-resistant mineral wool insulation was installed in the exterior wall. Cladding was installed over a vented rain screen gap to prevent wind-driven water intrusion. This enables the building to withstand unusual rain events, increasing durability.
Building Performance
Here are the design metrics for the Freeport House:
- Building energy standard: Passive House International Low Energy Building
- Heating demand: 9.1 kBtu/ft²/yr
- Cooling and dehumidification demand: 7.7 kBtu/ft²/yr
- Total source energy: 38 kBtu/ft²/yr
- Air leakage: ACH50 0.6 (blower door test result)
- Floor area: 1,744 ft²
Energy Use Data
We have done some monitoring and will continue to update energy use data. Figure 3 shows the total electricity use versus the energy for HVAC. Figure 4 shows a very even inside temperature and very low humidity.
Total Energy vs. HVAC [kWh]
The Polar Vortex Versus Passive House
The polar vortex that arrived earlier this week has for days disrupted life across an entire region. Deaths and injuries were reported. Decades-old records fell. And, for one more day, even stepping outside remained a painful, risky experience. In New York City, where it was 10 degrees at midday, Mayor Bill de Blasio urged people to "bundle up and stay inside as much as possible." With wind chills expected to fall below zero, city officials warned landlords to provide adequate heat to their tenants.
—New York Times, January 31, 2019
The polar vortex was no match for the Freeport Passive House. Its performance on January 31 was unbelievable. The heating energy needed for this extreme weather event was no greater than that needed for normal winter weather, and heating costs were less than $1 per day (see Figure 5). The total energy used for heating by the mini-split system for that day was 5.5 kWh. The HVAC system turned on 11 times and ran overall for two hours and 52 minutes . The total energy used for hot water was 14.3 kWh. The heat pump DHW system turned on 25 times and ran overall for two hours and 57 minutes (see Figure 6).
Passive House Heating Energy—kWh per day
Passive House @ Polar Vortex | January 31, 2019
A Happy Homeowner!
I got a call the other day from the new homeowners. "Our bill was only $ 42.88 this month," they told me . "By the way, we have a friend who is looking for a home like this, too."
learn more
Get continually updated energy use data for the Freeport House.
Team Members
Architect: a.m. Benzing architects Pllc
Developer: GreeNuvo LLC
Builder: North Shore Construction Services Incorporated
Get more on Passive House design and the DesignPH software
New York Passive House is engaged in a pilot monitoring project, the purpose of which is to improve the collection and transfer of data
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EL MONTE>> A YouTube video that features a man's discovery of shredded plastic in a bag of rice noodles created a internet sensation over the past several days and led an El Monte company to fire an allegedly disgruntled employee.
A video titled "Man discovers plastic in noodles" went viral over the weekend and garnered more than 3.4 million views before it was taken down. Other versions, including the original, have far less views and are still available online.
In the video, a man demonstrates the material he found in his bag of Rice Stick Noodles or Banh Pho Tuoi made by Lucky K.T. Co., Inc. was plastic. He uses a cigarette lighter to to explain the discovery. When flame was applied, the plastic material melted; the noodles burned.
"For people out there who's eating this brand, be very, very careful, very very careful," said the man, who does not identify himself and is dressed in a grey T-shirt filming in a kitchen.
He says he planned to write a letter to the company.
Lucky K.T. Vice President Eric Wong Monday morning identified the video creator as John Tran. Wong said Tran contacted the company several days after the original video was posted.
Wong also said he reviewed the company's surveillance footage and found that one employee shredded the thin plastic sleeves that are placed in the bags of noodles to separate the noodles and placed it in the bag among the noodles.
"It was a disgruntled employee," Tran said.
"We immediately terminated him, unfortunately that bag got out," he said.
Wong said the footage showed the plastic shreds only made it into one bag.
"We've been in business for 30 years," said Wong. "We do not pride ourselves on putting plastic in our noodles. Plastic is more expensive than rice."
He said the company has contacted the Los Angeles County Health Department about the incident.
A Reddit thread about the video has more than 2,500 comments.


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Encryption used in Apple's iMessage service is thwarting federal drug enforcement agents' attempts to eavesdrop on a suspect's chat messages, according to a report published Thursday.
The CNET report cited an internal government document discussing a criminal investigation in February. It warned that because of the encryption, "it is impossible to intercept iMessages between two Apple devices" even when agents have obtained a court order. The Drug Enforcement Agency "Intelligence Note" said iMessage stymied the ability to perform real-time electronic surveillance under federal wiretap statutes. Text messages already obtained from Verizon Wireless were incomplete because the investigation target used the Apple service. "It became apparent that not all text messages were being captured."
The report is the latest and most detailed example of the technological obstacles law enforcement authorities face when conducting court-authorized surveillance. FBI Director Robert Mueller has described the problem as "Going Dark." Over the past decade the FBI has pushed for laws and regulations that increase agents' access to social-networking websites, VoIP and chat services, e-mail services, and broadband providers.
Apple officials have never publicly discussed in detail precisely how iMessage encryption works. When the service was announced in 2011, the company said it would use "secure end-to-end encryption," according to CNET. In October, CEO Tim Cook said 300 billion messages had been sent over iMessage, which uses the Internet for transmission as opposed to SMS messages, which are sent over wireless providers' networks. The CNET article also pointed to this partial analysis of iMessage and this blog post from Matt Green, a cryptographer and professor at Johns Hopkins University. Green said iMessage has "lots of moving parts" that provide ample places where things could go wrong.
The DEA said that "iMessages between two Apple devices are considered encrypted communication and cannot be intercepted, regardless of the cell phone provider," CNET reported. But if messages are exchanged between an Apple device and a non-Apple device, they "can sometimes be intercepted, depending on where the intercept is placed."


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Daylight Saving Time 2014 ends Nov. 2
Start your day with our Alarm Clock app
Daylight saving time (sometimes called daylight savings time) ends Sunday morning Nov. 2, 2014 at 2 a.m. Enjoy an extra hour of sleep this weekend and wake refreshed with our Alarm Clock app. iTunes | Google Play
With the end of daylight saving time, remember to turn back any clocks that do not automatically "fall back," before you go to sleep Saturday night.
Our Alarm Clock app will update for you as long as your device's time settings are on "Set Automatically." Get the app - iTunes | Google Play
Alarm Clock app makes mornings easier. Know what to wear today and if you need an umbrella with quick weather. See top trending headlines and what news friends shared on Facebook - - all before getting out of bed.
Most Americans get to spend extra time in bed Sunday morning after daylight saving time comes to an end, and we "fall back" to standard time, but not everyone gets to enjoy the extra hour of sleep.
A 1918 law standardized the start and end dates of daylight saving time, but the law does not require states or territories to observe daylight saving time. People living in Arizona, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas Islands won't need to change their clocks this weekend.
National surveys by Rasmussen Reports show that 27 percent of respondents admitted they'd been an hour early or late at least once in their lives because they hadn't changed their clocks correctly.
So make note and share this with your friends. Daylight saving time 2014 ends Sunday, Nov. 2 at 2 a.m. Enjoy the extra hour then wake with our Alarm Clock app where you'll find all the info you need to start your day right - - right at your fingertips.
For mobile: See pictures to help you remember the time change.
Get our Alarm Clock app now - - iTunes | Google Play


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The California Single-Family Home Water Use Efficiency Study
This article deals with a simple subject: how water is used in single-family homes in California. This topic has important consequences for the future of the state of California. The state's official goal is to reduce per capita water use by 20% by 2020.
The study upon which this article is based is a bottom-up approach to the subject. Rather than trying to infer customers' water use patterns from gross production data and various other sources—such as surveys and census information conducted on whole populations of customers—we have collected highly detailed information at the water meter on random samples of customers chosen from billing databases, with the goal of projecting patterns in the populations from these samples. The overall period covered by our investigation ranges from 2005 to 2010, and the bulk of the water use data were collected from 2005 through 2008.
We believe that the results of the study shed light on how California single-family customers are currently using water; on how their water use patterns have changed over the ten-year period since the Residential End Uses of Water Study (REUWS) was conducted in 1997; and on how future water use patterns might be modified in order to increase the efficiency of use and modify demands to moderate the need for raw water withdrawals from increasingly overextended supplies.
The California Single-Family Home Study
The California Single-Family Home Water Use Efficiency study includes data from many traditional sources—such as billing data, survey data, weather data, and aerial photo data— to analyze the water use patterns of a sample of over 700 single-family homes across ten water agencies throughout the state of California. Detailed flow trace data were obtained from portable data loggers, which were attached to the water meters of each of the study homes. These flow traces provided flow readings at ten-second intervals from the magnetic pickup, which generates 80 to 100 pulses per gallon. These highly detailed flow data make it possible to identify individual water use events and to categorize them by their end use. The flow trace data tell not just how many gallons per day the home used, but how many gallons per day were used for individual end uses, such as toilet flushing, clothes washing, dishwashers, showers, irrigation, faucets, and leaks.
Detailed use information can be pulled from the trace, giving, for example, a count of toilet flushes and toilet flush volumes during a logging period. Researchers used flow trace data to determine levels of daily use in the homes, and the efficiency of that use. Although the flow trace technique is subject to marginal error, such as error from the miscategorization of some events, it provides information on end uses that is not available from any other source. This article summarizes the results of the study, which began in 2005 and was completed in 2010. Water use patterns found during the 2007 logging period were analyzed to determine the potential for conservation savings from both indoor and outdoor efforts.
Information on Current Water Use
Assessing the efficiency of water use in single-family homes implies having a standard upon which to base the comparison. The efficiency of the homes can then be described as a numerical value based on the chosen standard. For single-family homes, it is necessary to have two standards: one for indoor use and one for outdoor use.
Determining efficiency standards. The standard used in this study for indoor use was the household water use for a home employing best available technology for all fixtures and appliances, and with less than 25 gallons per household per day (gphd) of leakage. In effect, the indoor standard was based on the EPA WaterSense specifications for indoor devices. In the report, the data from the 2000 study of a group of 100 homes that had been retrofitted with high-efficiency devices—the EPA Post Retrofit Group—were used as the benchmark for what we referred to as efficient homes. For indoor uses, it was possible to have a single number that represented the number of gallons per day of use expected for efficient homes.
While indoor uses are relatively consistent from home to home, outdoor uses are much morevariable, and it is really not possible to have a single number that tells how many gallons per year should be used for outdoor purposes. What served the purpose for an outdoor standard were two values referred to in the study as the application ratio and the volume of excess use. The application ratio is the ratio of actual outdoor water use to the theoretical requirement for outdoor use; this theoretical requirement is based on the size and type of landscape, the local evapotranspiration (ET), and whether there is a swimming pool on the property. An application ratio of 100% indicates that precisely the correct amount of water is being used outdoors at the home. The volume of excess use is the difference between the actual outdoor use and the theoretical requirement (in thousands of gallons, or kgal). Using these parameters, an efficient home will have an application ratio of 100% or less, and will have no excess outdoor use.
A total of 735 homes from ten water agencies were included in the indoor analysis for this study. The weighted average annual total water use of these homes was 132 kgal per year, or 362 gphd. The average daily indoor use for the homes, as determined by the flow trace analysis, was 171 gallons per household per day (gphd). By subtracting the indoor water use from the annual use, the outdoor use can be estimated. The weighted average daily outdoor use for the group was190 gphd. Approximately 53% of the annual total water use appears to be for outdoor uses and 47% appears to be for indoor uses, based on billing data analysis.
Indoor efficiencies. When the indoor use (plus leakage) was analyzed from the flow trace data, it suggested that the indoor use for households has declined since 1997, when the RUEWS group conducted its study. However, it is still significantly greater than the indoor use for the EPA Post Retrofit Group. Table 1 compares the indoor use of the study group to that of these two benchmark groups.
When the indoor uses are disaggregated, the results are more revealing. The disaggregated data (Figure 1) show that, as one would expect, there have been significant reductions in indoor use for toilets and clothes washers in California between 1997 and 2005. At the same time, the indoor uses attributed to the other categories have stayed the same or have increased in a way that has masked the savings from the toilets and clothes washers. This pattern is especially true for events classified as leaks. The analysis showed significantly more long- duration or continuous flows that get classified as leaks. These continuous events, which are found in a small number of homes, raise the average volume of water attributed to leaks for the study group from around 22 gphd to 31 gphd. This finding calls for further investigation to determine whether these truly are leaks, or whether they are due to devices that actually create a continuous demand for water. This information is important, because if the leakage, faucet use, and shower use were all brought down to the levels shown in the REUWS study, the average indoor use for the group would be around 150 gphd—which would have been a significant improvement from the 1997 data.
The data show a major improvement in the water use efficiency of toilets. There were a total of 122,869 flushes recorded during the data-logging period. The average flush volume was 2.76 gallons, and 64% of all flushes were less than 2.75 gallons. The one negative finding on toilets was that apparently many toilets that are designed to meet the ultralow-flow (ULF) standard of 1.6 gallons per flush (gpf) are flushing at significantly larger volumes. This helps explain why the study found that only 30% of the homes were at average flush volumes of 2 gpf or less, while all of the program data, confirmed by survey data from this study, suggest that over 60% of the toilets in the population are ULF or better models.
Figure 2 compares the distribution of toilet flush volumes in the California Single-Family Home study and the REUWS study. This shows a dramatic shift in the bins containing the largest percentage of flushes. In the 1997 sample, the largest percentage of flushes were between 3.75 and 4.25 gpf, but as of 2007 they were between 1.25 and 2.25 gpf. As more of the toilets on the right side of the distribution are replaced with high-efficiency models, the overall demands for toilet flushing will drop well below the current levels, and the percentage of homes meeting the 2 gpf efficiency criterion used for this study will increase.
Figure 3 shows the distribution of clothes washer load volumes from the data in the California study. As of 2007, approximately 30% of homes were using 30 gallons per load or less for clothes washing. At the time of the REUWS study, only around 1% of the clothes washers used less than 30 gallons per load, so the current data represent a major advance; but these data also show that there is still significant potential for savings in clothes washer use.
There was little change in shower use between 1997 and 2007. The average was just over 18 gallons per shower (around the same volume that is required to fill up an occupied bath tub), and the duration of showers was just under nine minutes. Nearly 80% of all showers were flowing at 2.5 gpm or less. Reducing flow rates and duration of showers remain the methods available for conservation in showers. These are behavioral changes that people can make to save water during periods of drought or all the time.
The average leakage rate in the California study homes was 31 gphd. The median rate was 12 gphd. The wide disparity between these values shows that a small group of homes are leaking at a very high rate, which increases the average for the entire study group. Leakage is complicated by the fact that some events that Trace Wizard categorizes as leaks may be due to devices such as water treatment systems that create a continuous demand for water. The research team does not believe that this occurs very often. Leaks from very short-duration events, such as drips or occasional toilet flapper malfunctions, usually amount to 10 gpd or less of household demand. The leaks that contribute heavily to household demand are those that continue for many hours or days. Most of these leaks are caused by continuously running toilets, broken valves, or leakage from pools and irrigation systems. We need to learn more about these continuous events, so that we can deal with them appropriately. The sample group used an average of 33 gpd of water for miscellaneous faucet use. Average volume was less than 1 gallon per use; average duration was 37 seconds. The average home recorded over 57 faucet events per day. Faucet use represents a category of growing importance as toilets and clothes washers become more efficient. The key to improving the efficiency of faucet use is to decrease the flow rates and the duration of the events.
Outdoor use efficiencies. Only 87% of the homes in the study group were assumed to be irrigating. This assumption was based on the fact that some lots had no irrigable area, and some homes showed little or no seasonal water use. Only around 54% of the homes that irrigate are doing so to excess. Overall, outdoor use efficiency is fairly good. Figure 4 shows the distribution of application ratios in the study homes.
The average outdoor use volume for the irrigating homes as a group is very close to the average theoretical requirement. The average annual outdoor use for the group as a whole is 92.7 kgal. The average theoretical irrigation requirement (TIR) for the group is 89.9 kgal. So, taken as a whole, there is only 2.8 kgal of excess use per lot occurring in the group. Another way of looking at this is that the underirrigation in the less-than-TIR group just about balances the overirrigation in the more-than-TIR group
The data indicate that there is a substantial savings potential on the lots of customers who are overirrigating. From the perspective of water conservation, the customers who are deficit irrigating need to be set aside, and attention should be focused on the overirrigators.
The excess-use statistics shown in the full report show that the average excess use on the lots that are irrigating is approximately 30 kgal per year. Since only 87% of the lots were irrigators, the average excess use for all single-family accounts is estimated at 26.2 kgal per year. Approximately 62% of this excess use is occurring on 18% of the irrigating lots, or 15% of all lots. This is critical for water management, because it shows that in a typical system most of the savings from outdoor use will be derived from around 15% of the customers.
Estimating Conservation Potential
The question of how much potential water savings we can achieve in California is closely related to how well we determine the levels of efficiencies. The study used models of indoor and outdoor water use developed from the data collected in the study homes to predict the impact of making specific changes in indoor and outdoor water use. These models were used to predict conservation potential in the study homes, and by inference, in the state.
The data and models show that average indoor household water use could be reduced from the 2007 level of 175 gphd to 120 gphd if
- the maximum clothes washer volume were 20 gallons per load;
- the volume of water used by miscellaneous faucets could be reduced by 10% from 2007 levels;
- leakage could be reduced to a maximum of 25 gphd; and
- the maximum toilet flush volume could be set at 1.25 gpf.
This amounts to a potential of 55 gphd of indoor savings per household, or 20 kgal per year. The report did not discuss precisely how these goals were to be met, and these changes could occur gradually over many years. The key is to retain building codes and regulations that require the standards be met in new and remodeled construction.
The data and models show that the conservation potential remaining in the system from outdoor use is greater than the potential from indoor use. The study found that there are three key parameters for modifying outdoor use: the irrigated area, the water demands of the landscaping, and the percentage of homes that are overirrigating. Data in the full report show that, according to the outdoor use relationships observed in this study, if the average irrigated area were decreased by 15%, the average landscape ratio decreased by 35%, and the percentage of homes that are overirrigating reduced from 50% to 20%, it would be possible to reduce outdoor use to an average of 40 kgal per household from its 2007 level of 90 kgal. The low-end estimate is that by simply reducing the percentage of overirrigators to 20%, and leaving all of the other parameters intact, outdoor use could be reduced by 28%, saving approximately 0.6 million acre-feet (MAF).
Our study identified three levels of potential conservation savings for the single-family sector. The indoor savings potentials are based on the end point chosen for indoor household use. A potential average savings of 20 kgal per home was estimated assuming an indoor use benchmark of 120 gphd. The estimate could be raised to 30 to 40 kgal per household assuming that benchmarks of 105 gphd could be achieved and more aggressive indoor technologies used. Consequently, we can conceive of three levels of indoor water conservation benchmark: a low, medium, and high level at 20, 30, and 40 kgal per year per home. Total indoor estimates statewide are based on the estimate of 9.5 million single-family households in the state.
The study estimated outdoor potential conservation savings at a low of 0.6, a medium of 0.80, and a high of 1 MAF per year. The savings in all three ranges are deemed technically achievable, but achieving them would require significant and increasing work over time. It would also require innovations in preventing overirrigation and changes to both irrigated areas and plants used for landscaping. It is encouraging, however, that the low-end savings would more than achieve the desired 20% reduction in use. The practicality of achieving savings in the high range is less clear, and is closely related to less clear; it depends on the value placed on the saved water (or costs for agencies to develop new supplies as alternatives). Table 2 provides a summary of the estimated potential conservation savings derived from this study.
Guidance for Allocation of Resources
Since the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in 1991, water conservation efforts have been focused on implementation of the Best Management Practices. These are mainly programs that lend themselves to tracking on the basis of activities performed and fixtures replaced. The most convincing argument for the effectiveness of water conservation efforts, however, is one that is backed up by hard data that show reductions in household water use. The California study demonstrated techniques of sampling and data collection that can be used to collect these data. Detailed analyses of household and per capita water use on representative samples of customers can provide valuable information that will complement the agencies' other tracking and evaluation efforts.
The degree to which both excess use and potential savings are skewed in the population should be considered when designing programs. Programs that aim to control leakage or excess use of water for irrigation should not be targeted to the entire population, since most of this leakage and excess use is associated with only a few customers. It would be better to design programs targeted to just these customers. Water budgets, smart meters, leak detection devices, and better customer education will all prove useful.
The information on toilets should also help water agencies to design better programs. The data in the California study showed, first, that even though a high percentage of toilets appear to have been replaced with ULF models, the percentage of homes that are flushing at 2 gpf or less is lagging what it should be, and second, that the actual flush volumes of ULF models range well above 1.6 gpf. If future retrofits are focused on newer high-efficiency toilets (those using 1.28 gpf or less), and work continues to replace all of the remaining high-volume toilets in the homes upgraded to the high-efficiency toilets, the percentage of complying homes will increase rapidly over time, and household water use devoted to toilet flushing will decrease.
The data show that reducing the percentage of homes that overirrigate is the single most important factor in reducing outdoor use. The report, however, does not support making weather-based irrigation controllers mandatory. The data show that these devices would cause irrigation to increase in about as many homes as it would be reduced. The key to controlling outdoor use is to design programs that discourage excess irrigation use while allowing customers who prefer to underirrigate to continue to do so. This requires targeting overirrigators. This in turn requires having a rough estimate of the irrigated areas and outdoor water use for each customer, and comparing this information to the customer's actual seasonal use.
The report highlighted the importance of leaks and other unexplained continuous uses in raising average use for the entire population. Rather than have general programs targeted to all customers, the report suggests that it would be better to have systems that can alert customers to the existence of a use pattern that suggests a leak, so that the leak, if any, can be remedied immediately. In every group of houses that were logged as part of the study, there were several that showed these long-duration and high-volume leak-like use patterns. Having programs in the billing system that detect increases in use and then send a text message, phone call, or e-mail to the customer is one possibility. Having in-home monitors that read data from the AMR meters directly is another. Having water rates that seriously penalize excess water use would provide an economic incentive for customers to save water.
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Download for free the full report upon which this article is based.
Get more information about the U.S. EPA WaterSense specifications.
The report suggests that developing better customer information and water use tracking systems would greatly improve water agencies' ability to establish better water management programs. As the old saying goes, you can't manage what you don't measure. Key information that would assist in water management would include the number of residents in the home, annual and winter month water consumption, the size of the lot, and size of the irrigated area, and the local ET for the lot. Such information would be invaluable for planning and evaluation purposes. Systems that provide customers with real-time information on water use, along with targets for use, enlist the customer as an active partner in water management. Having the customers as partners should greatly enhance the response of the entire system.
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10 Discussion Questions for Book Clubs
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
This reading group was not authorized or approved by the author, publisher or agent for the book. This guide is copyrighted by Janice Harayda, and its sale or reproduction in any form is illegal except by public libraries that many reproduce it for use in their in-house reading groups. Reading groups that wish to use this guide should link to this site or use "Contact" page on One-Minute Book Reviews to learn how to request permission to reproduce the guide.
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is a sparkling exception to the rule that bestsellers tend to become dated within a generation. This modern classic first appeared in 1946 and has never lost the droll charm that made it in an international hit. Eric Hodgins (1899–1971) satirizes the modern lust for property in a comic tale of Jim Blandings, a Manhattan advertising executive, and his wife, Muriel, who decide on a whim to buy and restore a 170-year-old farmhouse in Connecticut. When house turns out to be too decrepit to restore, the couple resolve to tear it down and build another on the site. This decision sets up a plot in which they square off against bankers, lawyers, architects, contractors, hostile neighbors and the local historical society – all the people who still bedevil home-buyers. Cartoonist and children's author William Steig (1907–2003) adds to the comedy with more than three dozen fanciful drawings.
Questions For Reading Groups
1. Yesterday's bestsellers tend to look outdated quickly, and comic novels age faster then others because so much humor hinges on references to current events. Most novels from the era of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House have gone out of print. Why do you think this one still appeals to people?
2. Eric Hodgins tweaks the naiveté of Jim and Muriel Blandings throughout his book. Did you find the two appealing even though they often make bad decisions? Why?
3. Many contemporary novelists make heavy use of brand names in describing new homes. Hodgins doesn't. Why do you think he avoided filling his book with references to specific products? How does his novel benefit or suffer from this approach?
4. Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House satirizes the modern lust for property. But it lampoons other things, too. What are some of them?
5. Jim and Muriel Blandings tangle with tradespeople and others. But their main antagonist is the house they are building. How does Hodgins give the place enough character to keep you from feeling as though you're reading an extended article in Better Homes and Gardens?
6. Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House was published at the beginning of the baby boom, when families were expanding. How do you think people might react to the novel if it were appearing in print for the first time today?
7. Much of the humor in this book springs from its tone. Sometimes the tone is ironic:
"The evil days were behind them. The delays had been galling; the mistakes costly. The experience had been bitterly won, but it won it was. Their plans were perfect, their money was in sight, and now, thank God, work had at last begun. Nothing was so cozy, Mrs. Blandings thought, as the sight of workmen plying their trade on behalf of a home …" [Page 141]
At other times, the humor is more direct and involves local speech or a play on words, as when a man refers the Lansdale Historical society as "the Hysterical Society." [Page 178] How would you describe the overall tone of the novel? How well does it serves the book?
8. What do William Steig's drawings add to the novel? What do you think Steig was trying to do with them? Was he trying stick closely to the text or add a dimension?
9. Other satirical novels that you may have read include Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities, Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary and Christopher Buckley's Thank You for Smoking. All of these differ in many ways from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. How would you compare their humor? What do they all the book have in common? What makes all of them work?
10. Roger Kimball, co-editor of The New Criterion, wrote that the 1948 movie Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy is "charming … but nothing compared with the novel." [The Wall Street Journal, March 11, 2006] If you've seen the movie, do you agree or disagree?
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. By Eric Hodgins. Illustrated by William Steig. Simon & Schuster, 228 pp., $12, paperback.
A review of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House appeared on One-Minute Book Reviews, http://www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com on April TK, 2007, and is archived with the April posts and in the "Novels" category.
Movie Links: Eric Hodgins's novel inspired two movies. The first was the 1948 Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy www.imdb.com/tt0040613/. The second was the 1986 The Money Pit with Tom Hans and Shelley Long www.imdb.com/title/tt0091541/.
If you found this guide helpful, please bookmark this site or subscribe to the RSS feed to avoid missing others. The Totally Unathorized Reading Group Guides cover fiction, nonfiction and poety and are posted often but not on a regular schedule, because they are created only for books that need or deserve them.
© 2007 By Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.


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WASHINGTON (AP) – Just in time for inauguration coverage, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has joined CBS News as a contributor.
Rice, who served as secretary of state during President George W. Bush's second term, made her debut on 'Face the Nation' Sunday and will be included in inauguration coverage on Monday.
CBS News Chairman Jeff Fager and president David Rhodes made the announcement Sunday, saying Rice 'will use her insight and vast experience to explore issues facing America at home and abroad.'
Rice was the first African-American woman to serve as secretary of state, following Colin Powell in the office. She was Bush's national security adviser during his first term and worked on the National Security Council under his father, President George H.W. Bush.
As secretary of state, Rice warned of weapons of mass destruction in pressing for war in Iraq that killed more than 4,400 Americans. No weapons of mass destruction were found.
More recently, Rice was part of the team offering Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney general strategy and advice on foreign policy.
Her primetime speech at the Republican National Convention in August received raves. She did not mention President Barack Obama by name, but spoke of the crisis in education and the need for immigration laws that protect the country's borders while meeting economic needs. She also said that although there was a sense that for far too long America has carried the burdens of supporting free people and free markets, but that if the United States does not lead no one will lead, fostering chaos.


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Lucy Lawless says trespass ruling 'great victory'
'Xena' actor Lucy Lawless says her sentence for trespassing during protest is 'great victory'
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — "Xena: Warrior Princess" actor Lucy Lawless says she's won a "great victory" after a New Zealand judge handed her a modest sentence but declined to order costs sought by oil company Shell for her role in a protest aboard an oil-drilling ship.
Lawless and seven other Greenpeace activists were each ordered Thursday to pay 651 New Zealand dollars ($547) costs to a port company and complete 120 hours of community service after earlier pleading guilty to trespass charges.
Last February, Lawless and six other activists climbed a drilling tower on the Arctic-bound vessel Noble Discoverer to protest oil exploration in the Arctic. Another protester helped from the ground. Lawless spent four days atop the 174-foot (53-meter) tower, camping and blogging about her experiences. The action briefly delayed the ship's voyage.
Shell Todd Oil Services, which had chartered the ship, sought about 650,000 New Zealand dollars ($545,000) in reparations from the protesters.
Lawyers for the activists contended that amount was excessive. In his ruling, Judge Allan Roberts said the company could pursue its claim through the civil court system.
Shell Todd declined to comment on whether it would pursue civil action. In a statement, the company said it has "always supported the efforts of law enforcement to respond to this incident and to deter such activity in the future."
Lawless is best known for her title role in "Xena" and more recently for starring in the Starz cable television series "Spartacus."
"I consider it a great victory that the court has struck down the reparation demand from Shell, which I think was absolutely ludicrous," Lawless said.
She said she was happy to clean toilets, pick up litter or do whatever else was required for her community service and that she has no regrets about taking part in the protest, which she said has helped highlight concerns about oil exploration in the Arctic.
Greenpeace says more than 2 million people have signed its petition to make the Arctic a sanctuary and off-limits for oil exploration.
Lawless said she plans to continue protesting against climate change and oil drilling.


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Green Dreamin'
What do you get when you cross a deep energy retrofit with an 1880s Victorian-style home?
When Jen and David Hovis began to seek out their energy-efficient dream home in the Ohio City neighborhood of Cleveland, their list of must-haves was short but insistent. First of all, their new house had to be big enough to accommodate their two boisterous, fast-growing boys, as well as both sets of visiting grandparents. They also preferred to remain on the city's Near West Side, a historic area of stately Victorians and charming sidewalk cafes where they'd happily begun to put down roots with other families. Finally, they wanted their home to be comfortable, sustainable, and affordable.
But as Jen and David began looking at available homes with their Realtor, they quickly realized that their dream home didn't exist. Most of the homes they saw either weren't large enough or were too pricey to justify the retrofit work they needed. There were a number of rehabbed homes on the market, but the renovations put more emphasis on granite countertops and stainless appliances than on R-ratings and blown-in insulation. The kind of custom, ultragreen home that the Hovises sought was rare, indeed.
That's when Jen and David stumbled upon a grand old Victorian on West 32nd Street in the heart of Ohio City. The 4,000 ft2 home had been badly fire damaged when a ramshackle boarding house next door burned down. Despite its current rough condition, however, the home's innate charm was evident in the curved, spindled staircase, old pine floors, and welcoming front porch. Certainly it was large enough to accommodate the growing family's needs—and then some.
The Victorian was on the market for a mere $40,000. Its out-of-town owners, who'd used it as a rental property, didn't want the hassle of making repairs. The question was, could this inefficient behemoth be renovated to produce genuine energy savings? The Hovises weren't sure.
"The house was dark and parts of it were closed off, but right away I fell in love with the gorgeous staircase with its heavy, turned spindles," says Jen Hovis, a physician who works at the Veterans Hospital in Brecksville, a suburb just south of Cleveland. "The fireplace was also in immaculate shape, even though its walls were black with soot."
Despite the obvious fire damage, the Hovises saw potential. And because they hadn't found their dream home on the market, they decided to create it for themselves. Within days, they'd signed a contract and launched the daunting task of retrofitting this leaky, draft-ridden old home into the perfect green home for their family.
The Hovises decided to pursue a deep energy retrofit (DER). A DER is a construction process that uses an integrative, whole-house approach to achieve much more significant energy savings than conventional energy retrofits. Although the process is time-consuming and complex, the potential for savings is immense.
Six months later, the renovation of the Hovises' home was nearly complete. It was not without a host of challenges, however—including replacing siding, plugging unseen leaks, pouring a new basement floor, and finding the best possible workers. Nonetheless, the results are impressive. Completing a DER added about $50,000 to their rehab costs, yet the home now consumes 80% less energy and saves $6,000 per year in annual utility costs compared to the annual utility costs the previous owners incurred before renovation. Because they plan to stay there, that's a rough payback period of less than ten years—and if you factor in the low-interest financing they received from urban rehab programs in Cleveland, the payback period is actually even less.
"Our home is now five times as efficient as when we bought it," says David, a research engineer who studies material science at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "It's also more than twice as efficient as an Energy Star house, and nearly three times as efficient as a home built to today's building code.
"The energy modeling predicted that we would use about 85,000 cubic feet (85 MCF) of natural gas for heating and 20 MCF for hot water (not including the gas dryer), for a total of about 105 MCF per year," continues Hovis. "We actually used 58 MCF in the year ending February 23, 2012 (which included the gas dryer). The estimated numbers for the baseline of the house (assuming conditions as they were prior to the fire) were 650 MCF for heating and 40 MCF for hot water. I have no way to confirm these numbers, though the estimate of 80% reduction seems to be confirmed by the degree to which Dominion East Ohio, our gas company, overestimates our gas usage."
The electricity data are also impressive. Postretrofit, the predicted energy use was 14,421 kWh per year. The actual energy use through February 20, 2012, was 11,220 kWh per year.
Deciding on a DER
DERs are often more challenging to complete on larger, historic homes because these homes are typically complex in shape and design, which makes them costly to insulate. "At first I thought, 'Oh God, this is an awful house for a deep energy retrofit,'" says Matt Berges, the Hovises' contractor, with a laugh. Berges had first learned about green building while working for Habitat for Humanity in California. Since then, he has built a successful career specializing in high-performance home retrofits and new construction.
"In searching for projects that would make a good example of a deep energy retrofit, I was looking for a house small, simple, and rectangular in shape. This house had tons of dormers, bump outs, and historic features, so I figured it would be too costly," Berges explains. "Then I realized that a bigger energy hog means a bigger payback. The potential for savings was huge."
In short, Berges, who has completed more than 100 projects in Cleveland, had found the perfect test home for mastering the DER's complex art. If he could complete a successful retrofit of a drafty, old Victorian that leaked like a sieve, then, well… he could pretty much do this anywhere, right?
It helped that the Hovises were very committed to doing a comprehensive green rehab of their home. "When they said the words deep energy retrofit, I was willing to meet with them," recounts Berges. "Having a customer that allowed me to do this project was very exciting."
For the Hovises, it was also a perfect match. "Matt liked us because we were clients who cared more about insulation than granite countertops," says David with a laugh.
Even so, the Hovises soon discovered that while almost any rehab project is a moving target, DERs are a minefield of tough, hard-to-swallow decisions. Once the plaster was gone, the scope of work soon expanded to address hidden problems.
A Continuous Thermal Barrier Starts in the Basement
"There were a lot of unknowns. It can be like opening a can of worms," explains Berges, who soon demolished the interior so that a full scope of work could be identified. "A lot of areas ended up being worst-case scenario."
One of the first decisions that the Hovises had to make was whether or not to tear up the basement floor and pour a new one. Berges had been through this decision-making process when completing a DER of his own home, and one of his regrets was that he elected not to do it initially. (He ended up pouring a new floor later, which was more expensive and difficult.) The Hovises listened to his advice and took the plunge.
"A lot of people want to skip the basement floor removal," says Berges. "But once you seal the house up so tight like we do, it gets harder to ignore a less-than-perfect basement assembly that will allow moisture and contaminants like radon to work their way up and into the house. You need a continuous and uninterrupted air and thermal barrier on or around the entire enclosure. If you ignore the basement, then it eventually catches up to you."
In addition to allowing moisture to gain entry into the house, most basements in older homes contain the furnace, hot-water tank, and other mechanical systems. If the basement is dank and moldy, then dank, moldy air gets circulated throughout the entire house, compromising indoor air quality (IAQ). Removing the floor and pouring a new one at a later date, once the mechanicals are installed, can also double or triple the price.
To address the house's "dungeon basement," as Berges describes it, he and his crew demolished the entire floor, dug a foot down in order to raise the ceiling height (since gravel and rigid foam had to be added), and poured a new floor. They also installed an interior drainage system, insulated the basement walls, and installed a subsystem passive radon stack to keep soil gases from entering the house. "We dug down and found tree roots and all sorts of things under there," says Berges.
Stone walls in the basement were sprayed with closed-cell foam so that they were moisture impervious, which tied into below-slab foam that was complete and continuous. David Hovis now stores his woodworking equipment in his basement, which is dry and comfortable.
A Protective Membrane Around the Entire House
One of the other challenges that the Hovises and their contractor faced was what to do about the wood siding. Although much of it looked salvageable from the outside, once the crew closely examined it, they realized that it could undermine their work. Not only was it rotting, but there were gaps in it, leaving places where water could get in. There was no weather barrier behind the siding to protect the sheeting or insulation that the contracting crew would be adding on the inside of the home.
"We toyed with the idea of scraping and painting the older siding for a moment, but we knew that to ensure that this building could last another hundred-plus years, we would need to insulate and protect the structure better," says Berges. "We had to add exterior control layers for air, thermal, and moisture protection, including two layers of rigid foam and a good drainage plane. Those things just don't exist in older houses. We waste extreme amounts of energy through our typical 2 x 4 walls. As a result, to get a fresh start, we ended up removing and replacing all of the exterior siding, which was obviously a big part of what made our overall approach more expensive."
Compared with a normal renovation, what Berges proposed was costly and labor intensive, but it was also cost effective, considering the end result. "Typically, you'd put fiberglass batts or dense-packed cellulose between the studs, but then you haven't stopped the moisture and air movement through these old wall assemblies," he says. "You need to wrap the house in multiple layers of protection."
By covering the entire house in two layers of 1-inch polyiso foam, installing house wrap, and strapping for a drainage plane behind the new HardiPlank siding, Berges kept the exterior "dry, conditioned, and controlled." That allowed him to use a more affordable, typical approach on the inside cavities. The overall approach made the house R-12 on the exterior with an added R-13 between the cavities. Despite the extra costs involved, Berges says the insulation will increase long-term durability, IAQ, and affordability.
"People drop $30,000 on kitchens and baths, so why not invest an extra $30,000 in energy savings?" Berges says. "In 100 years, you could replace the kitchen and heating system three times. These improvements are not short term—they'll be there long after I'm gone."
Historic and Green
Because the Hovises used a low-interest loan program that was offered by the nonprofit Cleveland Restoration Society, exterior choices were critical. When it came time to choose windows, for instance, it was important that they fit in with the character of the home, which was built in the 1880s in an Eastlake style bordering on Craftsman.
"Because we were completing a historic renovation, the windows had to be fiberglass, wood, or aluminum," explains Berges. "Had it not been a historic renovation, we could have put one-third of the cost into vinyl windows and achieved the same energy savings, thus shortening our payback time tremendously. Instead, the owners chose a high-quality fiberglass window."
Although he admits that he was "torn" between finding cost-effective solutions and restoring the home's historic integrity, Berges was ultimately happy with the choice. "Vinyl has more negative repercussions for the environment than fiberglass," he admits. "Also, I can appreciate how nice the house looks now, having followed these guidelines."
The Hovises say that it was sometimes difficult to navigate between the goals of a historic renovation and a green rehab, but that they too are happy with their choices. Moreover, the successful DER of their home suggests that, while doing a historic green rehab requires some tough choices, the two goals are not mutually exclusive.
Doing the Roof the Right Way
One of the toughest challenges Berges faced was finding a roofing crew that was up for installing the new roof assembly, which included 3 inches of rigid foam on the top (under the new oriented strand board and shingles). This was not an easy roof to work on. Ultimately, he decided to relieve his roofing crew and have his trim carpentry crew install the rigid foam to get the quality he wanted. "You need a trim carpentry mind-set, and guys that appreciate what you're trying to do," Berges says. "After achieving an R-19 continuous rating on the top side and R-22 on the inside, we were satisfied."
What Berges learned from working with his roofing crews actually applies to the entire job. Over the years, he has built up a reliable crew of workers who understand his objectives and help him to achieve his radical energy efficiency goals. "Everyone plays a part in sabotaging a good building envelope, so it really takes involvement and buy-in from all of the subcontractors," he says. "Since I started doing this, I have gotten together a good group of guys that support the mission."
Finishing the Interior
The Hovises' interior finish choices were environmentally conscious, too. They reused old framing lumber in their new framing work, reused wooden doors that were salvaged from a former convent in the nearby Slavic Village neighborhood, and installed high-efficiency mechanical systems and Energy Star appliances throughout the home.
Today, the house is a thoughtful blend of old and new, historic and contemporary. The original pine floors in the foyer and living room were refinished, a portion of the old curved plaster wall was preserved, and the elegant staircase has been fully restored. At the same time, the kitchen, bathrooms, and most other rooms are completely new.
The Hovises also paid attention to details many homeowners would overlook. They made sure that the cabinets were sealed, since it is difficult to find formaldehyde-free cabinets. This is an approach recommended by Green Communities, says Berges.
"They did not just rely on me to make all of the decisions," he says. "They were part of the team, and we all worked to meet the many goals of the project."
The Finished Product
In the fall of 2010, the Hovises moved into their newly restored, five-bedroom green-built home. Not only are they happy with their spacious home and the surrounding neighborhood, but their DER is now producing impressive energy savings.
"I wanted to get to a 75% energy reduction, which is how Linda Wigington of ACI has defined a DER, and show that this could offer a less-than-ten-year payback," says Berges, who is constantly working to fine-tune DER modeling so that such practices can be replicated in other homes. "Once you factor in the low purchase price and the low-interest financing, it's like, 'Yeah, of course I would want to do that.'"
The HERS score of the home before it was renovated was 181, which is very poor. An Energy Star home typically has a HERS score of 85. Today, the HERS score of the Hovises' home is 38.
There are plenty of barriers to completing a successful DER, Berges knows. In addition to the fact that it's more expensive (typically by $25,000–50,000 for most renovations), he says, lenders, appraisers, and real estate agents don't always appreciate the value such features bring to a comprehensively rehabbed home. Moreover, smaller homes generate smaller cost savings.
learn more
To learn more about the Cleveland Restoration Society, visit www.clevelandrestoration.org.
For more information on Environmental Health Watch, visit www.ehw.org.
Contact Matt Berges at Bergesllc.com.
Berges also works with Environmental Health Watch, a local nonprofit organization. In this capacity, he is helping to bring the DER model into the rehabilitation of homes for low- to
moderate-income families. In partnership with other builders and developers, he has completed a number of home renovations in which the average HERS score is in the low 30s. The cost of renovation has also become more affordable over time.
Beyond the cost savings and environmental benefits, Jen and David are thrilled about staying in the Ohio City neighborhood they love. The boys enjoy nearby Fairview Park and they all enjoy walking to cafes and farmers' markets. Many of their best friends live within walking distance, too.
"We're grounded in the Ohio City neighborhood, and there's a social network for everyone here," says Jen. "We wanted to do a green rehab, find a good deal, and buy a larger home in our neighborhood—and we were able to do that."
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Flower Bracelet - Erica
Flower Bracelet - Erica
💎 Materials:
- 14k Gold Electroplated - more durable than regular platings
- Cubic Zirconia
📐 Length: 15cm + 5cm Extender
📍 We are based in Vancouver, Canada. Prices are set in USD - to shop in your preferred currency, please scroll to the bottom and select country.
📦 Shipping to U.S. (USPS: US$4.99+) and Canada (Canada Post: US$0.99+) takes 1-2 weeks. Please allow extra time for shipments to arrive in remote areas or regions impacted by severe weather conditions. Free shipping on orders over US$50.
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Read Me
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💌 For peace of mind, select insured shipping at checkout. When your shipment is not insured, you agree to waive any claim to refunds for lost or damaged goods.
❗ Please make sure all shipping information is correct and complete. We are not responsible for any losses, delays, or additional charges due to incorrect addresses. Contact firstname.lastname@example.com immediately if there's any mistake.
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1. Where are you located? How long does it take for me to receive my package?
We ship all orders from Vancouver, Canada. It takes 1-2 business days for us to prepare them; 1 business day for our shipping partner to bring packages across the Canada-U.S. border; and 4-8 business days for USPS to deliver your package.
Our shipping partner doesn't accept any packages on holiday and weekends. All orders placed during holiday and weekends will be shipped out on the next business day.
2. Will your jewelry turn me green?
Items from our Solid Silver Collection don't rust. Also, most of our new arrivals were electroplated with 14k gold, they are much more durable than regular platings. Please keep gold-plated jewelry away from hand sanitizer, perfume, dry shampoo and any chemicals may contain alcohol. Alcohol will damage the gold-platings. Please refer to the materials listed on the product page for more information.
3. Are your products hypoallergenic?
We use hypoallergenic materials such as Sterling Silver (nickel and lead free) and Gold. Please read the product description carefully before placing an order. If you have extremely sensitive skin, you might need to consider jewelry made with solid gold. You can visit our Material & Jewelry Care Guide for more information.
4. What's the difference between Regular and Sample Sale items?
For the items on sample sale, there are minor imperfections on them but they are barely noticeable. Imperfections might include scratches, dents, or glue left on the surface, no broken items will be sold.
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Each order is carefully prepared and beautifully packaged from our studio in Vancouver Canada.
We change the theme of the designs of our packagings based on the seasons and holidays. We want to create a delightful and unforgettable unboxing experience for our customers.
The invoice/packing slip comes with your order doesn't have any prices.
All orders will arrive in a cardboard mailer box or thick envelope. Jewelry will be packaged in reusable self-sealing bags/glassine bags and soft jewelry pouches. Our packagings are designed to be reusable. We post packing videos on our Instagram and TikTok, feel free to check them out :)
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Sergeant killed in Afghanistan laid to rest
Family, friends and neighbors of Staff Sgt. John Michael Hennen, 26, gathered Sunday to honor his life and his service in the U.S. Army.
Hennen, who was a lifelong Vinton resident, was killed in the line of duty by a roadside bomb June 17 in Afghanistan.
Hennen's body was flown to the Lake Charles Regional Airport by a charter jet Sunday and then escorted to Vinton by local veterans.
The service, which was held at Vinton First Baptist Church, was led by his pastor, Rob Sumrall.
In response to a special request by Vinton Mayor Kenneth Stinson, Vinton residents lined the streets as Hennen's casket was carried out of the church after the service.
The procession began on Center Street and continued down Horridge Street toward the Niblett's Bluff Cemetery, where the burial took place.
The service was attended by numerous family members and friends from near and far, along with several local dignitaries, police officers and public officials.
Words of comfort may be shared with the family at www.mem.com.


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Last evening on the The Kosher Scene at 8:00pm (Eastern Time), I had the privilege of talking to cookbook author and Cordon Bleu trained Chef Geila Hocherman. Her book, Kosher Revolution is coming out on the 23rd of this month, but can already be pre-ordered on Amazon.com. Having examined an advance copy I can testify that not only is the photography a delight for the eyes, but the quality of the recipes will make even the most casual observer's mouth water.
Having met Ms Hocherman on previous occasions, having heard her talk about food and life and general, her passion for those subjects is obvious. If you look at her picture on the right, taken from her book, her joie de vivre, her love for her work is all too apparent. In real life she comes across just as lively and vivacious as in the photo, with an infectious joy and dedication to everything she does.
Next week we will post our review of her book including one of her recipes with a beautiful accompanying photo. Meanwhile, you can listen to our archived interview from last eve with Chef Geila here and our Wednesday interview with David Mintz, here.


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Nail salon rivalry leads to fight, injuries, arrest
Manager injured in assault by nail salon employees
A nail salon manager is recovering after a rivalry with another salon escalated with an assault.
WLWT News 5's Brian Hamrick said that the incident began on April 12 when an employee of Escape Nails and Spa in Hyde Park Plaza began walking up and down Edwards Road near another salon, Ambiance Nail Salon and Spa.
Escape's manager, Chanh Luong, told Hamrick that Ambiance workers confronted his employee and told him to leave, but Luong told the employee to stay.
A short time later, Luong said, several Ambiance employees came to Escape and assaulted Luong, shoved an Escape worker to the ground and damaged a chair and other products inside.
Photos: Salon manager assaulted
"I was standing in the parking lot and they came over and just jumped me," Luong said. "They punched me about my head, neck and back."
Police arrived and arrested one man, John Nguyen, and charged him with assault and criminal damaging. A man by that name is listed in online documents as being an owner of the salon.
Nguyen has pleaded not guilty.
Police records show another woman was pushed to the ground.
Employees said the men ransacked the salon and threatened another female employee, who told WLWT News 5 one of the men told her not to mess with his business.
Luong said he was briefly hospitalized and on pain medications for a week after the assault.


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Starting today, AT&T will begin restricting more than 16 million broadband users based on the amount of data they use a month. The number-two carrier's entry into the broadband cap club means that a majority of American broadband users will now be subject to limits on how much they can do online or risk extra charges as ugly as video store late fees.
The new limits—150 GB for DSL subscribers and 250 Gigabytes for UVerse users (a mix of fiber and DSL)—come as users are increasingly turning to online video such as Hulu and Netflix on-demand streaming service instead of paying for cable.
With the change, AT&T joins Comcast and numerous small ISPs in putting a price on a fixed amount of internet usage. It's a complete abandonment of the unlimited plans which turned the Internet into a global behemoth after the slow-growth dial-up days, when customers were charged by the minute and thus accessed the internet as sparingly as possible.
Comcast's limit, put into place after it got caught secretly throttling peer-to-peer traffic, is 250GB—which the company says less than 99 percent of users hit. AT&T plans to charge users an extra $10 per month if they cross the cap, a fee that recurs for each 50 GBs a user goes over the cap. And while 150GB and 250GB per month might seem like a lot, if you have a household with kids or roommates, it's not too difficult to approach those limits using today's services, even without heavy BitTorrent usage.
And it should noted that US limits are far from the world's worst: Canada's recently imposed restrictions prompted Netflix to give customers there a choice of lower quality streams to keep their usage down since users are charged up to $5 per GB they exceed their cap. Caps are also worse in Australia.
But for the nation which has been key to a wildly expanding Internet, the changing tide is both a practical and cultural letdown.
The drive to cap usage is ostensibly a way to reduce costs. But in reality, it's not about the cost of data—bandwidth costs are extremely low and keep falling. Time Warner Cable brought in $1.13 billion in revenue from broadband customers in the first three months of 2011, while spending only $36 million for bandwidth—a mere three percent of the revenue. Time Warner Cable doesn't currently impose bandwidth caps or metering on its customers—though they have reserved the right to do so—after the company's disastrous trial of absurdly low limits in 2009 sparked an immediate backlash from customers and from DC politicians.
The real problem ISPs want to fix is congestion due to limited infrastructure. Cable customers share what are known as local loops, and the more that your neighbors use their connection, the less bandwidth is available to you—-a situation that becomes painfully clear in the evening when cable users see their throughput fall.
The blunt force approach of a bandwidth cap does have the advantage of making users think twice about streaming HD movies from Netflix. That is, perhaps not coincidentally, doubly to the advantage of most big ISPs, because they'd rather have you spending money on their video services than a third party. Bandwidth-intense services threaten to turn the likes of Comcast, AT&T and Time Warner Cable into utilities—a dependable business, but not one that has the huge profit margins these companies have come to enjoy.
Indeed, the question of who gets to write the rules about the Internet's pipes is the major bone of contention in the net neutrality debate, both for terrestrial and mobile data networks. When the new net neutrality rules go into effect, ISPs won't be able to block their online video competition, but there's no rule against doing that via bandwidth caps or tiered usage pricing.
Moreover, as we all move towards more and more cloud services, whether that's for backups, music or movies, it's worrisome that ISPs are more concerned about reining in their most dedicated customers in service of meeting Wall Street's expectations. Instead, they should be taking the opportunity to dig up the streets to create fiber networks that will make us a nation that's top in the world's broadband ranking chart, rather than a laggard.
The real solution is adding infrastructure at the local level, though an interim solution could entail metering data only during peak times, much as mobile phone calling minutes plans apply only during peak hours.
But that just goes to show, yet again, that what's good for the Street often doesn't translate into what's good for the country.
Listing image by Photo by Todd Barnard


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Black Fabric - 1200 gr / m2
5-9 business days
2 years
DeliveryWhat contains the Citroen C4 Grand Picasso (2013 - current) economical car mats?
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In 360's ground-breaking study on kids and race, teens talked candidly about interracial dating. What they said begged for a response from their parents, so Anderson and Soledad O'Brien sat down with their parents.
I'm a white mom of biracial (black) sons. Here in California, rarely an issue. And when dating a girl who's parents may have an issue it is swiftly brushed under the rug by her parents once they discover their father is a physician. Which of course summarizes what we all know: race is seldom an issue when money is involved in our society of greed and selfishness. The bank account we hold tends to become our race, not our face. It's additionally difficult for my sons to navigate.
And let's all be honest here. Had Treyvon been one of my sons, Zimmerman would be locked up. Thing is, Treyvon IS my son, our countries son.
I think that this study that you've done is very eye-opening. Not surprising, but interesting.
I enjoyed the discussion on interracial dating. I am a black female age 65 and my first exposure with interracial relationship occured in 1968 when my father died. my oldest brother, whom was in the military, came home with a white wife. my famuly adored her. they decided to reside in my brother's home town, but when my sister in law started working at a local restaurant , her employer discovered she was married to a black man, she was fired.
So, you can see who had the problem with interracial dating.
This is 2012, I have a 8 year old interracial grandson and my husband has an white daughter in law and inter racial grandson.
I have no problem with a human being because of their race because God made us all in his image and I believe that the racial issue will ALWAYS be a problem for some people.
Robbie, God Bless you... My Mom was in her 90's when she passed. One of her best friends was a black lady her age. They were friends for a long time up until Daisy passed away. Her son Walter continued to visit my mom a couple times a year until she moved.
I was born in 1963. I remember seeing the 'Colored' fountain next to the "white" fountain at Woolworth's. I thought, being a kid of maybe 5, that meant the water came out in colors! When mom explained to me no, it isn't any different, it was the same exact water, I remember asking why there were two then, and my mom just said because some people don't see the good in others because they can't see past the color of their skin. Thank God for people like you, Daisy, and my Mom, or this world would be a much worse place to live!
This is a great topic to share with Todays American Youth and their Families.... However, Anderson Cooper you overlooked one key group in this study.... children and adults of mixed race with their view points and history on growing up in a multi-racial, multi-cultural and or multi-religious Home.... i.e., my family. Christian\Buddhists, European\ Asian and Adopted siblings from a past marriage. Life is not just Black or White.
perhapd people of different backgrounds really can't get along and all the struggles of equailty and equal rights were for naught.
These parents' responses are prime examples of covert racism that is plaguing our society today! Hellooooooo!!!!! The fact that they felt the need to have a talk with their kids about their boyfriends or girlfriends of different races sends the message to their kids that it's not okay, and it is, in fact, something that they need to "have a talk" about. We all know what that means when our parents say that to us. Jimmy's parents say they had the intention to make sure that Jimmy didn't feel that there was something wrong with his own race, but you can tell from Jimmy's comments that that is not the way his parents presented it to him. Clearly the message that Jimmy took away from that conversation with his parent was "Why are you dating white girls?" as if he shouldn't be doing it and he needs to explain himself. And Luke's parents! I'm sorry, the guise of "there may be some cultural differences there and we want to make sure you've thought about them all" is hard for me to buy. Even if those were their genuine concerns, the reason that they were bringing those concerns up with their daughter was because her boyfriend was black. Sitting your kids down and saying: "Your boyfriend is black, so we need to talk about these things" sends a strong message that there is something wrong with it. These kinds of conversations between parents and kids are exactly the reason why kids were exhibiting such racial biases in the answers to the study questions!
Color dont have anything to do with the color of our skin we all have the same blood running through our body,but some people dont see that these young people dont care wake up it 2012 Jesus made use who we are live with and deal with it
Reality is that, there are many different races and people do speak different languages and eat different food, pray to different kinds of god and have many different ethics and values. Worse yet, etiquette may be different or clashing. There is certain fear about crossing those borders and it is valuable to discuss such concepts. But in a high-school environment, same school district, same community .. it is not that difficult to get to know other families and make intelligence choices rather than worry about just race factor. Not like pen pals where kids write to kids in other countries and make friends, get to know the culture..
Since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's, the issue of race has been debunk by many experts including political pundits,psychologists,religilous leaders,socialologists,etc. Yet, we still find ourselves rehashing old arguments about this subject. Race is a myth. The main reason will still have racism is because the older people of the baby boom generation continue to teach their children about myths concerning skin color. They continue to teach their children about the superiority/inferiority complex between whites and blacks.
Thank you! I teach high school, and I am always disappointed when I ask my students how many races there are. I'll get all kinds of numbers, 2, 3, 4, 5; but I rarely get 1. The fact is that there is only 1 race – HUMAN. The problem with race relations in America is that we, as a nation, still use the word race as though it the correct term. There are still forms in schools, doctor's offices, and job applications that ask for race. And then we have conversations with educated adults – like the one here – and they try to pretend that they don't have any issues with poeple of varying cultures. Want to know the truth – go to their house for a party and see who shows up. Most people in America today live near and work with people of varying ethnicities, yet they choose to socialize with a vary narrow ethnic set of friends. Why is that? Because we still have ethnocentric issues in this country. As long as we identify people by skin color, we will have issues with ethnic relations.
Love the survey, but u forgot about 1 thing...dah...What about true love? RYBW
Appreciate this special – it's always helpful to see abstract concepts lived out in real life. Would love to see Asians, Hispanics, Polynesians included more in this conversation to understand the construction and consequences of race in more than a black-white dichotomy.


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